LETTERS
Hewers of wood and drawers of water Thank you for the continuing coverage of the question of school finance reform. Feature articles in the December 1995 (see pages 22, 31), April 1996 (see page 42) and May 1996 (see pages 6, 41, 42) issues of Illinois Issues clearly document the disparities in educational funding between wealthy and poor school districts. And perhaps even more significantly, they highlight the irresponsible and spineless behavior of Illinois pols who continue to dodge the issue because of their fear of taxes. House Speaker Daniels' "quality first" act exemplifies the response of our weak political leaders. Daniels pretends to be concerned about education but refuses to address the issue of Illinois' inequitable school financing. His "quality first" program might be more appropriately termed "equity last." It guarantees that the state of Illinois will continue to educate two classes of citizens: a highly educated elite; and a cruder gang — fit only to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." Lest I confuse anyone, the "hewers of wood" remark comes from a 1937 statement made by the British commissioner of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, now the independent country of Ghana. More precisely, the commissioner, W.J.A. Jones, stated that the people of northern Ghana "were an amiable but backward people, useful as soldiers, policemen and laborers in the mines and cocoa farms; in short, fit only to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for their brothers in the Colony." The result of this attitude was the creation of two Ghanas: the educated south where 80 percent of the children attend school; and the illiterate north where only 30 percent attend school. Over the course of three years, as a Peace Corps volunteer and Fulbright scholar, I have seen firsthand how educational inequality cripples both the haves and the have-nots. Faced with an appalling lack of facilities, Northern Ghanaians are migrating to the southern cities, overloading the health and transportation systems, and increasing the incidence of crime, homelessness and disease. For those still in the north, opportunities are few and living conditions poor. Thus, inequality has hurt both the north and the south. Illinois is far ahead of Ghana in terms of educational facilities. Yet inequality exists, and it hurts everyone. In the competitive global economy there are now only two ways to attract high-paying jobs. A region can attract employers if its work force is either highly skilled or willing to work for minimal pay. If Illinois continues to underfund the education of a third of its citizens, businesses will relocate. Everyone will suffer from the resulting unemployment, eroded tax base and strained social services. Illinois lawmakers need to find the moral courage to do the right thing — enact the recommendations made by the Ikenberry task force. Illinois needs to eliminate inequity and raise the quality of education in order to compete in the world economy. In the coming years, Illinois will need to train Internet surfers and electrical engineers rather than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Douglas Kenshol Bring peace to schools first I know you want letters kept to 250 words, but I don't think I can contain my disappointment with your columnists' coverage of the educational funding issue in so few words. Funding of public education through high school (which should really be called "schooling," a much narrower term than "education"), is the topic du jour. Allow me to rain on your parade, all of you who think it's just a matter of will on the part of the legislature (especially Charlie Wheeler, who ought to know better). The worst "results" among schoolchildren in Illinois seem to be in schools where minority students, chiefly Afro-American, come from families headed by one person, usually a mother who is on public aid or close to it. These are mostly kids from East St. Louis and the West Side of Chicago and, to a lesser extent, from the South Side of Chicago.
Illinois Issues September 1996 ¦ 39 Talk with the police officers, teachers, social workers and others who work in those areas — indeed, talk with the few survivors of those schools themselves — and you will find that the schools are not the reason why these kids do poorly. In fact, as Jim Nowlan once quoted a Knox College student of his who had come from such a school: The best thing that happened to me was the school; the difficult part was getting there and home each day (quote approximate). People I know who work in those areas verify that statement. When up to a third, if not more, of the kids born in those war zones (I won't call them "neighborhoods") have AIDS or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or drug addiction, it is ludicrous to think that anything short of a massive medical program will make those kids ready for school in five years. Who today quotes the studies of a few years ago that the single most reliable statistic on a child's performance in school is the years of formal education his mother had (and to a lesser extent, his father, if dad was around)? Doesn't anybody want to admit that children who are in the bottom 10 percent in eighth grade were in the bottom 10 percent of child development the day they entered kindergarten? Doesn't anybody want to talk about why these kids, at age 12, usually answer the question, "What do you think you'll be doing five years from now?" with "Dead"? Educating children in these war zones is indeed like educating kids in Bosnia. They need to stay alive, to get something to eat, to avoid being raped and abused. After that, they can talk about learning something. One high school principal on the West Side about a decade ago told a friend of mine, "We can't let kids have textbooks or library books out over more than a weekend, because we have over a 100 percent turnover rate; their parents take them down South at least part-way through the year." Try assigning book reports in that kind of environment! When Irving Harris put tons of his own money into the Beethoven's Fifth project on the Near South Side, he met all the objections everyone had made to previous attempts to help kids. He hired only Afro-American women from the projects to interview and encourage Afro-American mothers in the projects to get prenatal care, to give birth safely, to get decent care for their babies, to enroll their kids in preschool programs. Of the hundreds of kids who qualified, only about 19, as I recall, actually went through the program. Their kindergarten teachers loved them and said they were as ready to learn as any kids in the high-spending schools. The others — well, the interviewers often found the kids scrounging for food while their mothers were unconscious on the apartment floor. Eventually, Harris said the only answer to this massive social problem was "free abortion." Of course, his findings got very little play in the Chicago papers. A physician who had served in the poorest Catholic section of Belfast and then spent some time on the West Side told me the kids in both areas were the same — they had post-traumatic stress syndrome by the time they were 10 years old. Like the Bosnian kids, they were war survivors. They have seen too much violence. When Laurie Dann killed people in Winnetka, the New Trier school system sent psychological counselors in the schools to help the kids understand violence. If Chicago public schools did the same, we'd have violence counselors in every classroom. You simply CANNOT compare the education systems of war-torn Bosnia on the Chicago River with other school systems in the state. Bring peace to those areas and the kids may stop thinking of school as the best thing that happens to them all day.
Ann Lousin Bill before Congress does not defend families nor reflect a free society I am very concerned about the outcome of the "Defense of Marriage Bill" that recently passed the [U.S.] House of Representatives and is expected to be voted on in the Senate soon. I am a United States citizen who is involved with an Australian citizen of the same sex. Our relationship is very similar to a typical heterosexual marriage. I have a lasting committed bond with this person and plan to grow old with her. We get along together fabulously and bring each other a great deal of joy. My family adores her. Joanne is honest, kind, loyal, loving and wonderful. I am currently trying to emigrate to Australia because as an American citizen I am not allowed to marry and immigrate my partner to the United States. I feel like a second-class American citizen. I am very close to my family and hate the idea of leaving them. My grandparents are getting older. Refusing to recognize lesbian and gay marriages federally will prevent any possible future relief to immigrate my partner to the U.S. and allow me to live close to my family. My chances of emigrating to Australia are good, but unfortunately the chances of Joanne's being able to immigrate to the U.S. are very slim. It makes me choose between living with my partner and being with my family in Washington state. It upsets me a great deal. This bill does not defend families; it tears them apart. Regardless how an individual feels about gays and lesbians, denying us the right to choose our partner is cruel and uncharacteristic of a free society.
Cricket Fauska 40 ¦ September 1996 Illinois Issues |
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